I'm not a bear...
Jul. 29th, 2006 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fingertroubleI've decided I'm not a bear, I'm a gay guy with a longish beard and a belly.
Why? Because it's Saturday night and (as a man who likes to go places where bearish guys hang out) I have nowhere I can go on my own without having to put up with one or all of five things:
Musclebears: Sorry, ex-squeeze me, when was a gym ever a place that a food-loving weight-confident bear should ever go? And I don't mean for health reasons, you don't take that amount of health-destroying 'roids and pump that amount of iron just to make sure you don't get late onset diabetes?
Bad Music: Pounding pounding techno music. What has this to do with cuddly bears exactly? Or anything gay? Bad DJing and shit music has turned gay London into a subculture of all it's own. One of bad music, bad drugs and bad venues...vanguards of taste, indeed. More to do with making people move faster so they drink more water/alcohol.
Too many Drugs: Not prudish (hey listen to my podcasts to hear my monged out audio experiments), but if you have to munch a vet's weekly supply to cope with any of the 5 of these, or your existence, then it's not cool it's just sad. And having to put up with (admittedly muscly and butch) queens on ketamine stumbling around does not make my night.
SM: Nothing against SM, they seem much more accepting than the bear scene...maybe that's why the bears scenes outside of London get lumped in with them (and sometimes even in London too). Makes finding a shag a sort of ironic lottery though (ooh is he actually a SM bottom, the top from hell, or Colin Self?)
Attitude: Heh not a muscle-fairy or SM-god or rugby-shirted bearded twink, and happy with your body? That's your date out of the window then...conform to the uniform, goto the gym and put up with the bad decor and music to get a shag, otherwise there's the door.
I think we should create a new group of bearded gay men nothing to do with bears.
Who's with me?
Why? Because it's Saturday night and (as a man who likes to go places where bearish guys hang out) I have nowhere I can go on my own without having to put up with one or all of five things:
Musclebears: Sorry, ex-squeeze me, when was a gym ever a place that a food-loving weight-confident bear should ever go? And I don't mean for health reasons, you don't take that amount of health-destroying 'roids and pump that amount of iron just to make sure you don't get late onset diabetes?
Bad Music: Pounding pounding techno music. What has this to do with cuddly bears exactly? Or anything gay? Bad DJing and shit music has turned gay London into a subculture of all it's own. One of bad music, bad drugs and bad venues...vanguards of taste, indeed. More to do with making people move faster so they drink more water/alcohol.
Too many Drugs: Not prudish (hey listen to my podcasts to hear my monged out audio experiments), but if you have to munch a vet's weekly supply to cope with any of the 5 of these, or your existence, then it's not cool it's just sad. And having to put up with (admittedly muscly and butch) queens on ketamine stumbling around does not make my night.
SM: Nothing against SM, they seem much more accepting than the bear scene...maybe that's why the bears scenes outside of London get lumped in with them (and sometimes even in London too). Makes finding a shag a sort of ironic lottery though (ooh is he actually a SM bottom, the top from hell, or Colin Self?)
Attitude: Heh not a muscle-fairy or SM-god or rugby-shirted bearded twink, and happy with your body? That's your date out of the window then...conform to the uniform, goto the gym and put up with the bad decor and music to get a shag, otherwise there's the door.
I think we should create a new group of bearded gay men nothing to do with bears.
Who's with me?
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-30 12:12 pm (UTC)nail on the head regarding the bears at the bars (I'm not going to give them the benefit by giving them a label that makes them somehow 'better' - you know what I mean - cos they're not.
I didn't sign up for any of that, I was programmed from an early age to like older men with beards; I was embarassed about it for many years when I realised that I was also sexually attracted, and the reason it took me 6-7 years to come out was that the gay scene didn't reflect that at all. So when bears came along I embraced it - it wasn't a fashion or genre thing for me.
But although I fit closest to that scene as seen from outside the gay world, inside I've never really fit. As I've said before, outside the bear scene I'm a bear, inside I'm not, so always on the periphery.
And yes before others say 'get more involved' I did around 98-2001 and experience was depressing as all-out war happened between the bear clubs; I went to the UK bear 'run' and even several of the Manchester bear events which were cool, but eventually died a death...
So I think we need an alternative! Especially in the UK, cos I think bears has died a death here or devolved into the types I detailed above. It's become a cliche, if only in commercial/organisational terms.